It was big week on the Internet. Many popular sites spent an entire day protesting SOPA, which resulted in both it and PIPA being put on life support. Good job, Internet! Megaupload was also taken down by the feds, leaving us wondering why we really need a law like SOPA[......]
While the once long list of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your iPhone has taken a hit with each new iOS release, that burning desire to "Free your device" and/or "Fight the power" and/or "Just do crazy stuff that other people can’t do" never really goes away. 3 months after the release of the iPhone 4S and 10 months after the release of the iPad 2, the ridiculously talented iOS hacking community has finally cracked the ultimate challenge for both devices: the untethered jailbreak. I know these things can get a bit jargony, so a quick recap: to "jailbreak" means to modify a device to run code and applications not signed or approved by Apple, thereby allowing you to do things with your device far outside of what would normally be possible. [......]
Another NinjaVideo admin, 24-year old Matthew David Howard Smith, was just sentenced to 14 months in prison and must pay $172,387. Read More: The first NinjaVideo sentence Read the comments on this post [......]
We first reported on Jarnos Smeets when his HumanBirdWings project was still a baby. [......]
If you thought Apple’s marketing squad was genius, just wait until you watch this Kickstarter video from Ingri:Dahl. If you aren’t already familiar with the "company," which you shouldn’t be, it’s basically two sisters named Kine and Einy, and they want to sell you a 3D clip-on for your glasses[......]
Resident Evil isn’t the only big video game series that made the news in Nippon today: Konami announced [JP] the so-called METAL GEAR SOLID SNAKE EATER 3D PREMIUM PACKAGE for the Japanese market. The set includes a special 3DS system, a copy of Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D, and two clear files in MGS design. [......]
One of the world’s biggest video game franchises is getting a new title: Capcom today announced Resident Evil 6 [JP] for the Xbox 360, Sony PS3, and the PC. What’s interesting is that the company also said when exactly the game will come out, namely on November 20 in North America and Europe, and two days later in Japan. [......]
Microsoft’s quarterly earnings statement didn’t have any big surprises. [......]
Before being shut down by the feds today , the file-sharing site Megaupload was extraordinarily popular with home Internet users—so much so that the file downloading habit was spilling over into the workplace in a significant way. The shutdown of the site—and the arrests of four of Megaupload's leaders today in New Zealand—are bound to have major consequences in the file sharing market[......]
The days of the $500 college textbook bills are, it seems, over. With Apple’s announcement of iBooks 2 , the world of textbooks is changed forever. Education is a hard nut to crack. [......]
Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “ territory that works may never exit .” (PDF) The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods. They claimed that re-copyrighting public works would breach the speech rights of those who are now using those works without needing a license[......]
The number of high-quality services that "compete with free" is growing—and some of the credit is certainly due to the major content conglomerates, which have made it easier to license and use their digital material. As a recent subscriber to Rdio, it's hard for me to imagine anyone who would even want to go to the hassle of pirating music when 13 million tracks are ready to be dialed up in instant, high-quality streams, complete with album art. [......]
The pro-SOPA ad in Times Square Creative America is fighting back. The group, which represents NBC Universal, Viacom, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, Disney, and others in the TV and movie business, launched a new TV commercial today supporting SOPA and PIPA[......]
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow's "Internet blackout" in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a "gimmick," a "stunt," "hyperbole," "a dangerous and troubling development," an "irresponsible response," and an "abuse of power." Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style. His statement feels unusually angry for the normally unruffled trade group, but the MPAA has long asserted that Google simply wants to profit from piratical ad money. [......]
Reeling from a broad Internet backlash, the Motion Picture Associaton of America has conceded that DNS filtering will not be included in the anti-piracy bills now making their way through Congress. "DNS filtering is really off the table," said Paul Brigner, the MPAA's tech policy chief, on Tuesday. His remarks came during a debate on SOPA at the State of the Net conference in Washington DC[......]
